The Fanfare classical music meta-list for best recordings of the year

Fanfare is the leading periodical for classical music reviews, and every year it asks numerous critics — this time 45 of them — for their top five classical music picks of the year. In turn, each year I present a meta-list, which simply is a list of all the works selected by more than one critic. This year we have:

I am surprised that you list Emerson, Manhattan and Brodsky as the classic sets of Shostakovich’s quartets. The classic sets are, and likely will remain for quite some time, are recorded by the Beethoven and the Borodin quartets. After all, these were recorded under the supervision of the composer himself. The two are different from one another, and both powerful in their evocation of Dimitry’s dread and fear.

I happen to have have heard Pacifica performing the 3rd, 7th, 8th and 13th in concert, and, to my ear anyway, I find them bland and superficial. It may be that the experience of a lifetime of nightly fearing the dread knock on the night-time door may be required to really encompass this composer’s most intimate creations.